Many buildings, and other locations have backup systems in the event of power loss. A standard installation that deals with typical power loss involves oil burning equipment, such as a backup generator or boiler, installed away from a main oil storage tank which is used to provide fuel to power the oil burning equipment. Such generators typically include a small local storage tank for the fuel or oil, and are located, for example, on a rooftop location above any flooding which may occur. Typically, when the generator burns most of its local fuel or oil, it sends a signal to a non-immersible electrically powered oil pumping system to cause additional oil from the main storage tank to be pumped to replenish the local storage tank, and keep the oil burning equipment running.
Typically, fuel oil stored in tanks for emergency generators have been located in the lowest levels of a building that may experience flooding. Because of the extreme weather conditions of the last half century, more installations have experienced flooding causing a failure of the generators coming online due to a lack of fuel.
More specifically, a problem with conventional systems, is that since the large oil tanks are often located at low elevations below a flood plain, electrically driven pumps, which are also located with the main storage tank containing fuel or oil, become flooded and destroyed. As a result it becomes impossible to keep the generators or boilers powered due to the inability to transfer oil from the main storage tank, which is underwater, to equipment requiring oil to run, such as backup generators or boilers.
One attempt to address these problems is provided by Preferred Utilities with its commercially available “water proof pump”. An electrically driven pump is placed in an enclosure with a bolted cover at one end. The electrical service is brought from a controller above a flood plain. The system may be configured with just the pumps below in the flooded area. However, there is a serious concern about the bolted cover being maintained watertight over time, thereby allowing leaks, which will destroy the pumps.
It is thus an object of the present invention to overcome the problems of existing systems, to provide a system capable of keeping oil burning equipment such as generators and boilers running, notwithstanding the occurrence of extensive flooding at fuel supply sites for that equipment. The system of the invention as described herein will function under normal situations when the area is not experiencing any flooding. Only in extreme situations will the system be flooded, and the system will operate under flood conditions, as well as in a non-flooded state.